Taking things to the next level. From my sofa

Monthly Archives: December 2013

That is some headline! What does it mean? It means that cancer, the second-leading cause of death in North America (a hair behind heart disease), is a disease of impaired cellular energy metabolism which causes gene and cell mutations – not the other way around. It means that cancer is rarely genetic, so therapies at the gene level are not going to “cure” cancer. What is going to cure cancer? Understanding its cause, and then preventing those causes from happening. Both: doable now, not at some point in the distant future.

WHAT CAUSES CANCER: IMPAIRED CELLULAR RESPIRATION

Cellular respiration is the term for essentially turning carbohydrates (specifically glucose) into carbon dioxide and water, which releases energy that can be used by the body. There are two steps to cellular respiration. The first step takes place in the intracellular fluid and is called glycolysis: the breakdown of glucose into pyruvic acid. The second step takes place in the mitochondria, where pyruvic acid is stripped of its electrons (oxidized) into carbon dioxide and water, which creates energy. When it all works well, it is a beautiful thing.

BUT WHEN IT GOES WRONG

Cellular respiration goes wrong for two reasons. The first is if a mitochondrion becomes damaged, the pyruvic acid cannot be oxidized into carbon dioxide and water to produce energy. The second reason is if there is not enough available oxygen in the blood (hypoxia), the pyruvic acid cannot be oxidized. Oxidization requires oxygen. In both cases, oxidation cannot occur so cellular respiration is thwarted.

But the cell wants to stay alive and produce energy, so it adapts – and avoids the damaged mitochondrion altogether, and instead uses FERMENTATION in the cellular fluid to produce energy. Handy adaptation, right? This fermentation adaptation has become known as the Warburg effect.

A cell fermenting glucose is the main biomarker for cancer, and is picked up by an MRI measuring metabolic effects on citrate and choline (as in the photo above).

Fermentation is great for an individual cell and it thrives. However the cell can no longer perform any useful actions for the rest of the body. It’s on its own now, a rogue cell, and what it does is multiply. Cancers with the highest growth rates have the highest fermentation rates.

Most cancers are the result of a damaged mitochondrion, not of hypoxia.

WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP READING

I’m going to jump way ahead to keep you interested. Cancer cells ferment glucose, got it? Well what if there isn’t any glucose available?

AN ABSENCE OF GLUCOSE MAKES A CANCER CELL STARVE AND DIE

If a cancer cell cannot access any more glucose, then it has nothing to ferment and cannot produce any energy to reproduce or even to exist. It will literally starve and die.

Conversely, glucose accelerates tumor growth. Do you remember what glucose is? It is what all carbohydrates are turned into. Do you get what I’m saying here? Eating carbohydrates makes your tumor grow; abstaining from carbohydrates makes your tumor shrink.

Now if you have been living under the sofa, you might still think that you also need glucose and carbohydrates to exist. Well that’s not quite true! Sure your cells are great at using oxygen to break down glucose – but your cells have another option beyond fermentation. I really need you to pay attention to this:

YOUR CELLS CAN RUN ON FAT INSTEAD OF GLUCOSE

I’m not kidding. This is totally true. It’s called dietary ketosis, ketogenesis, or fat-burning, and I have talked before about how the Swedes are embracing this lifestyle under the banner of a “Low Carbohydrate High Fat” (LCHF) diet. (Not to be confused with ketoacidosis which is the life-threatening condition known to Type 1 diabetics).

When your body runs out of glucose in the blood, and cellular carbohydrate stores have been exhausted, a signal is sent to the mitochondria of liver cells to start producing ketones. This whole KREBS CYCLE thing (also known as citric acid cycle) is initiated: ketone bodies make available energy which is stored as fatty acids, which are then broken down enzymatically into Acetyl coenzyme A (Acetyl-CoA) which is beta-oxidized for energy.

The cells in the body that have healthy mitochondria are going to oxidize the products of the Krebs cycle (such as acetone) instead of glucose for energy.

But how can a cancer cell oxidize the products of the Krebs cycle for energy if its mitochondrion is damaged? It can’t. The answer is that while the cell can adapt to ferment glucose in the intracellular fluid and bypass the damaged mitochondrion, the cell CANNOT adapt to ferment fatty acids or the products of the Krebs cycle. Can’t do it! So that cell with its damaged mitochondrion, fresh out of adaptations, will have to perish. Good riddance, damaged cell! And sayonara cancer.

GREAT, CANCER IS CURED. BUT WHY DO MITOCHONDRIA GET DAMAGED IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Let’s do a list. Agents of damage to mitochondria:

INFLAMMATION

CARCINOGENS

RADIATION

VIRUSES

OLD AGE

VERY RARE GENETIC MUTATIONS

RAS ONCOGENE OVERACTIVE SIGNALING – responsible for cell growth and division. This is a cause but also an effect of factors 1-6.

What do you notice about that list? Is it that we can actually control some of those impairment factors except viruses, age and very rare mutations? And even viruses we can get a handle on pretty early these days (not to mention the miracle of oregano oil and astragalus root). And very rare genetic mutations are likely a result of carcinogens, radiation or inflammation – so possibly also controllable at some point in your family tree (maybe not helpful for you, but it should be for your kids and grandchildren)?

WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD NOTICE

On that list of agents of damage to mitochondria: radiation. Yet another reason why the conventional cancer treatment of RADIATION THERAPY is a future death sentence, even if it buys some time in the present.

Also consider: using any kind of RADIATION TO DETECT CANCER is simply crazy (see: mammograms etc). Basically if you look for cancer long enough with radiation, you will find it thanks to the radiation.

Also on that list: inflammation. What this means is that using SURGERY (which is about as high on the causes of inflammation as you can get) to cut out your cancer can actually cause a lot more cancer. If inflammation causes abnormal cellular respiration, then using inflammatory surgery is not an easy solution for cancer unless you are only concerned with the short game. But more on this later.

NOW LET’S BACK IT UP

I haven’t offered up much supporting evidence so far, so let me be clear that I have sources. I have been suspecting the roles of inflammation and glucose (which can cause inflammation) in cancer for a while now, but was overwhelmed by the detailed research I came across in this really long, boring and expensive ($162!!!) book: “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management and Prevention of Cancer” by Thomas Seyfried. I will post a link at the bottom.

If you have cancer or care about someone with cancer, you can either take my word for it (don’t do that) or you can order this book. But hurry, only 5 left in Canada! I think you should read the supporting evidence for yourself – over 1,000 scientific and clinical studies demonstrating that cancer can be more effectively prevented, managed and treated when it is recognized as a metabolic disease instead of misinterpreted as a genetic mutation. The genetic mutation is real, but the cancerous genetic mutation is largely the symptom of broken cellular respiration, not the cause.

In Seyfried’s words, from Chapter 9:

“Despite overwhelming evidence showing cancer is a metabolic disease in line with Warburg’s original theory, most investigators today view cancer as a genetic disease where mutations and chromosomal abnormalities underlie most aspects of tumor initiation and progression. The view of cancer as a genetic disease is the dogma driving the academic pursuit for resolution and is what currently underlies the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to new therapies. Each person’s tumor contains mutations unique to that tumor and to that person. Consequently, tailored or personalized molecular therapies are considered to be the future for cancer treatment. This therapeutic strategy has emerged from a widely held view that cancer is a genetic disease. How sure are we really that cancer is a genetic disease?What if most cancers are not of genetic origin and that the multitude of gene and chromosomal defects seen in cancers are effects rather than causes of the cancer?”

In other words, what’s the point in inventing and fundraising for expensive therapies that target genes when the gene mutations are only the symptom and not the cause – and when the cancer will not be cured by these extravagant and complicated interventions?

THE CURE IS HERE NOW

The first thing I would do if I got a diagnosis of cancer would be to go on a water fast for at least 7 days. So would Thomas Seyfried. I would starve the crap out of my cancer and get my body into ketosis.

I would also change my entire life to eliminate outside stressors, make peace with the people around me, and limit my exercise to walking and gentle stretching and yoga. I would divert my energy towards healing instead of wasting it on exercise. So would Seyfried. He shows that vigorous exercise increases blood glucose due to muscle release of lactate and amino acids. Glucose feeds cancer, so vigorous exercise would be counterproductive.

After that though, Seyfried would go on a conventional ketosis diet with limited inputs (low calories). Basically he has seen the best results with a near starvation diet in the conventional ketosis ratio of fats:carbs:proteins. In case you don’t remember what a conventional ketosis diet is: traditionally the fats must be delivered in a ratio that is 4 times greater by weight than the combined proteins and carbohydrates.

I CAN DO BETTER

Seyfried’s research forté is oncology and cellular respiration. He falls short when it comes to diets. He knows that he needs his patients to reduce glucose and replace it with fat, and yet the only “safe diet” he has encountered to do this is the classic ketogenic diet created for epileptics and modified in the last twenty years to include industrial foods like canola oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil etc. No friggin’ way! Because those industrial oils are inflammatory! And inflammation damages mitochondria. Enough said.

In addition, Seyfried has a misunderstanding that to get into ketosis and stay in ketosis, it is mandatory to maintain a very specific ratio of fats:carbs:proteins. What is mandatory is the maximum amount of carbohydrates and proteins. The carbs need to be crazy low (say under 10g/day to starve a tumor) and the protein needs to be appropriate for your specific body or less. What is not mandatory is the ratio of fats to stay in ketosis, which can be increased.

Seyfried did not do any research or studies specifically into fat; instead he used his predetermined bias against the safety of fats that pervades our popular culture and medical literature. Let me say this one more time: fats and especially saturated fats are safe and healthy so long as carbohydrate consumption is limited. In this protocol, carbohydrates are especially limited, so fats and saturated fats are extremely safe and healthy. I do not blame Seyfried for missing this conclusion; it was simply outside the scope of his very detailed research.

LET’S REVIEW KETOSIS FOR A MOMENT

Conventional ketogenic diets (for epilepsy) say you must eat 4 times the amount of fat by weight as proteins and carbs. It also specifies that proteins and carbohydrates should be matched equally by weight. So that means if your body REQUIRES 50g of protein, you must also eat 50g of carbohydrates and a whopping 400g of fat in a conventional ketogenic diet. Incidentally, this is an insane amount of food and calories and everything.

This was Seyfried’s problem – that when he presented a cancerous body with 400g of fat a day, plus 50g of protein PLUS 50g of carbohydrates, it was just too much energy – about 4000 calories for a sick person who is not supposed to be exercising. In addition, 50g of carbohydrates was just too much glucose to starve any tumors at an effective rate. So Seyfried experimented with much lower values in the same ratio, and found that cancerous tumors regressed much better in a restricted caloric setting.

For example, the only way Sefried thought a patient could cut back on the carbs in a ketogenic diet was if he also cut back on the protein and fat, according to the ratio. So in order to make the diet work for 10g carbs per day, for example, he would cut back the protein to 10g and the fats to 80g. He thought it was important to reduce the amount of fat being ingested because of a cultural bias against fat and saturated fat. However he did not test for the safety of high fat/saturated fat diets on cancer or write about it; I contend this oversight was a cultural blind spot put there by conventional, outdated nutritional advice.

But I don’t think this is a successful recipe long term because the body requires what it requires for protein, roughly 1g per day per kg of body weight. This intense caloric restriction may be successful (in fact it is) in the short term at regressing tumors, but you will start to suffer without adequate levels of protein. And in addition, you will be really, really, really hungry and you will literally waste away. And furthermore, malnutrition is a huge risk for cancer in itself.

So if you consider that the body requires a certain amount of protein for daily growth and repair, that really doesn’t leave much room for carbohydrates because for every extra carb you must increase your fats fourfold. The trick to doing this successfully is to strip your carbs down to a bare minimum. The body actually doesn’t require any carbohydrates at all – not to stay in ketosis and not for optimum health. However it is almost impossible not to consume them one way or another. Even plain old meat breaks down into glucose at some level. The body makes its own glucose as needed, so you will never really be able to be completely free of it for the purpose of reversing tumors. However you can go pretty far in that direction if you put your mind to it.

SHOW ME A TYPICAL DAY

I think you’re going to want to visualize this with a typical day of eating. The challenge goes like this: if my specific body REQUIRES 45g of protein per day for optimum body growth and repair, then instead of adding another 45g of carbs and a whopping 90g x 4 = 360g of fat (as was Seyfried’s initial model), and instead of completely restricting consumption to 10g protein, 10g carbs and 80g fat, I am going to present another option.

First of all let’s get this out of the way: the barest-bones model. If my body requires 45g of protein then theoretically I could exist on that plus 45×4 = 180g of fat. But what I am suggesting is that we can have a little bit of carbohydrates if we just add some more fat. But we are by no means going to match the protein with the carbohydrates.

The daily menu I am aiming for has 45g of protein, 10g of carbohydrate and 220g of fat.

SAMPLE TUMOR BUSTING MENU

FOR BREAKFAST you would have to have a “Big Fat Butter Coffee” (1 Tbsp butter, 1 Tbsp coconut oil, espresso and hot water), 1 egg cooked in 1 Tbsp butter with a cubic inch of cheese shredded or melted into it. This comes out to 10g protein, 1g carbs and 48g of fat. Within the range!

FOR LUNCH you could have a salad with 1 1/2 cups of shredded romaine lettuce, 1/2 cup of chopped cucumber, a cubic inch of grated cheese, 2 pieces of bacon crumbled on top and a dressing made of 3 Tbsp olive oil, 2 Tbsp sour cream, spices and 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar. You would have to eat ALL of the dressing. This comes out to 11g of protein, 5g of carbs and 60g of fat. Within the range!

SNACKS are tricky. Pâté and cheese, even on its own without crackers, has too much protein compared to fat – so you would have to also spread butter on or something equally strange. You wouldn’t need any more protein on this “meal plan” I have suggested here, so all you can really can snack on is fat. I would suggest making an unsweetened chai tea (like from a teabag) and emulsifying coconut oil into it as a creamy beverage. This gives you 14g of fat, which is great and filling.

FOR DINNER you could have a can of sardines packed in olive oil (I chose that because it’s easy to visualize), a 1/4 stalk of broccoli with 3 Tbsp butter melted on it, and another small salad of 1/2 cup of shredded romaine with a dressing made of 2 tbsp olive oil to 1 tsp apple cider vinegar. For dessert you could have 1/2 cup of whipped cream. This gives you 19g of protein, 5g of carbohydrate and 92g of fat. Just within the range!

DAY TOTAL = 40g of protein, 11g of carbohydrates and 215g of fat, and 2100 calories.

This was really hard! And even after all this work, I was 5g too low on protein, 1g too high on carbs and 5g too low on fat. However this would absolutely keep anyone in ketosis, without starving or feeling hungry whatsoever. This is a lot of fat to get through, and it keeps you feeling really full. But the point of this exercise was to show that you can get into ketosis with a low amount of carbohydrates without resorting to a low amount of calories.

The ratio of proteins to carbohydrates does not need to be maintained to stay in ketosis.

WHAT IF I DON’T WANT TO EAT SO MUCH FAT?

That’s a great question. Conventional ketogenic diets required that the grams of fat in the diet be a huge multiple (4x) of the protein plus carbohydrate grams. This heavy handed dose of fat literally guaranteed that children with epilepsy would stay in ketosis and not have seizures. However if you have some Ketostix to measure your ketone level, you can probably observe that in your body you don’t need to be so heavy handed. You might only need 80-90g fat per day to feel satiated, not over 200g. (I will link to Ketostix buying options at the bottom). My point in describing a day in the life of a diet of 220g fat was to show that you don’t need to go hungry to be on a ketogenic diet.

YOU DON’T NEED TO INDEFINITELY STARVE THE BODY TO STARVE CANCER

I can’t see that many cancer patients would choose to live out their days in ketosis if they had to be near starvation every day. It’s just too much to ask, and furthermore IT’S NOT NECESSARY. Just eat an appropriate amount of protein and eat more safe, stable, benign fat for goodness sakes. So long as you keep your carbohydrates under or as close to 10g/day and don’t go overboard on protein (because excess protein essentially converts to glucose), you will stay in ketosis and starve your cancer cells.

In fact, there are thousands of people who are living in ketosis RIGHT NOW, simply as a healthy choice and not because they are reversing tumors or diabetes or anything, and they are finding that they can stay in ketosis without resorting to the 4:1 ratio of fats: proteins and carbs. Their ratios are much less severe, and yet according to their at-home ketosis monitoring strips, their bodies are still metabolizing ketones instead of glucose. The most important part about reversing tumors is that your body must be burning ketones instead of glucose; it doesn’t much matter how you get there.

You can wait for some large scale human clinical trials to be completed. But in my opinion, you don’t have the time. A therapeutic ketogenic diet with less than 10g carbs/day, bulked up with extra fat for satiety, is going to prevent and at the very least arrest most cancers.

ANOTHER BENEFIT OF KETOSIS AND KETONE BODIES

Ketone bodies are anti-inflammatory on your system. They are actually a more efficient fuel, and a preferred fuel, than glucose. Possibly this was an evolutionary pre-cursor to burning glucose. When our system metabolizes ketone bodies for energy instead of glucose, our mitochondrial health is maintained and nourished, which reduces the possibility for cancer to take hold.

NOT ALL CANCERS

There are a few cancers that do not depend completely on fermentation of glucose. Some cancers can adapt yet again, or simultaneously, from fermenting glucose – into fermenting glutamine instead. Glutamine is an abundant amino-acid in the body. In addition, glutamine is the preferred fuel source for cells lining the small intestine, so cancers in that area might not respond as efficiently, or at all, to carbohydrate/glucose restriction. These cancers might require specific drugs that arrest glutamine production from glutamic acid or glutamate.

However it gets a little too complicated for me here because glutamine is found throughout the body and is pretty much essential; not sure if we could survive without it. In fact, a low level of glutamine is typically expressed as a weakened immune system and a more permeable gut (“leaky gut syndrome”) – so basically as auto-immune diseases. I’d hate to remove glutamine from the system to starve off certain cancers only to develop a weak immune system and auto-immune disease. So I’m just not sure for these cancers of the small intestine (and possibly cancer of the lining of the stomach but not the stomach itself), that dealing with glutamine head-on is really the way to go.

However even these cancers will benefit from a nutritional ketosis or an LCHF diet because eliminating excess glucose is only going to be anti-inflammatory and beneficial.

WHAT ABOUT SURGERY?

Only after the patient has tried to reverse tumor growth with a ketogenic or LCHF diet should surgery be used. The initial period with the diet transformation will reduce inflammation, possibly shrink the tumor (seriously, this happens) and make the surgery more effective and less damaging if it still needs to be done at all.

WHAT ABOUT CHEMOTHERAPY AND OTHER DRUGS?

Seyfried is very, very careful to say that he thinks patients should still use traditional drug therapies as an adjunct to his diet protocol (consuming less than 10g carbs/day). He does not come out against chemotherapy or drugs (only against radiation), but he thinks they will work much, much better if the patient avoids glucose and carbohydrates. Chemotherapy is “much better” than it used to be! However none of us can know what Seyfried would do himself if the situation arose. We all have a personal decision to make when it comes to our own treatment, and we should all be flexible as newer, safer drug protocols are developed.

The main thing I would look at when considering a drug protocol is: does this drug promote inflammation or does it reduce inflammation?

WHAT ABOUT OTHER ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS?

Obviously! Look into the gifts of the Magi: Frankincense and Myrrh. I read about a guy who injected these essential oils into his tumor and made it disappear! Why would these essential oils be given to baby Jesus if they weren’t the freaking most powerful substances ever?

Look into super doses of Vitamin C (between 20 – 100 GRAMS/day), which can act as a non-toxic chemotherapy in some cases, as the ascorbic acid targets cancer cells but not healthy cells. This can be done in addition to conventional chemotherapy with no negative reactions – but it can make the conventional treatment more effective. Vitamin C should be taken in intervals throughout the day because if you take it all at once it doesn’t get absorbed (the expensive pee syndrome). Try out 500mg every 45 minutes while awake – and know that you’ve reached your maximum if you get loose stools. This is a fairly inexpensive and harmless thing to try. This would work best with pharmacologic concentrations delivered intravenously, and I will post the clinical research at the bottom which explains these findings. (There has been a long and controversial debate about this effectiveness, but it has recently been studied correctly and resurfaced).

Don’t fly around the world paying gurus and healers big money for their “treatments of the moment”. But if you read about an inexpensive treatment that DOES NO HARM, then what is the risk? Humans have been curing cancers for millenia before the medical system stopped curing it this century. Why not find out how they used to do it?

You’ll also want to be careful that your new diet isn’t malnourishing you. So that is going to take some concentrated effort. In particular, you are going to want to eat a lot of foods that contain active groups of respiratory enzymes (iron salts, riboflavin, nicotinamide, and pantothenic acid). You can get your dietary iron from grass-fed liver, beef and lamb etc. To be extra certain you are getting these B vitamins, I would try using a topical B-complex cream (I will post a link below). In addition, Vitamin D is known to enhance mitochondrial efficiency – so get outside or take high quality cod liver oil. Finally, melatonin protects mitochondria in bone and brain cells – so either keep your room completely dark at night and get a good sleep or consider a melatonin supplement, especially in a topical cream form (again, I’ll post a link to one at the end).

JUICING, THE STEVE JOBS/DR. DEAN ORNISH CANCER TREATMENT

Juicing, for all its hype, is a diet of pure carbohydrates. This is the single fastest way to get glucose into your blood except for eating candy. Cancer cells need glucose to survive. That’s what cancer cells do, they ferment glucose and multiply. I really don’t need to keep connecting the dots for you, do I?

LET’S TALK MORE ABOUT INFLAMMATION

Inflammation is the one thing you probably have the most control over. Inflammation is so key in the chain of events that lead to cancer that I’m going to make another list of variables that provoke tissue inflammation:

Inflammation damages cellular mitochondria, impairing oxidation and paving the way for intracellular fermentation. So your primary health goal should be to reduce inflammation at every turn.

WHEN DO I HAVE TO START EATING LESS THAN 10G OF CARBS/DAY?

You really only have to start eating less than 10g of carbohydrates a day if you find out you have a cancerous tumor, and only after you have done an initial water-only fast (or a much easier “fat fast” – fats and broths only). Most adults can function for 30-40 days on just water. If you think doing a fast is hard, you should consider how hard it will be to die and leave your family behind to pick up the pieces. Harsh, right?

Now let’s say you don’t have cancer (yet! Ha! I’m hilarious!) Probably you could get enough of a preventative effect from eating less than 50g of carbohydrates/day, provided you were mostly in ketosis. Let’s just make this a goal, okay? Now let’s say you slip out of it and go on a bender for a few weeks. Well guess what, it’s not the end of the world. Just do a therapeutic fast! Probably as little as 5 days on just water (or a fat fast) could set you straight if you were truly worried. Any cancer that was starting to take hold will be starved out. We all know we’re not really going to bother to do this, but I’m just putting it out there!

What’s more, it’s my personal opinion that if you are generally healthy, you don’t need to go to the extreme of a water fast to get the benefits of starving cancer cells. All you need to do is a fat/broth style fast – eliminate carbohydrates for a week and you will be in the same place as if you had water fasted, but you won’t be hungry or malnourished.

DO CARBOHYDRATES AND SUGAR ACTUALLY CAUSE CANCER?

No way, not at all. Emphatically NO. Excessive consumption, over a lifetime, will certainly cause inflammation and set you up for metabolic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s Disease etc. However we are clearly designed to flourish on a varying amount of carbohydrates. If your people (the people you are descended from over the last thousand years or so) lived in the tropics year round, chances are they adapted to eating a higher proportion of fruit, fructose and starchy, readily available carbohydrates; whereas if your people descended from the high north, you probably aren’t as well adapted to huge amounts of vegetation in your diet, and might thrive better on meats and fats. Humans are infinitely adaptable in their diets for survival; however it takes knowing where you’re from and understanding your own body to determine what kind of diet makes you personally thrive.

For me, I used to literally faint in public places if I started the day with carbohydrates and not enough protein or fat. Then when I hit my thirties, I noticed that carbohydrates caused my body to expand totally differently than in earlier days. I had to adapt and learn more about replacing most of my carbohydrates with fat. It’s not easy every day; it’s more of a journey to be honest.

AND NOW FINALLY, SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME ENRAGED

Mary and her grandchildren engaged in a sick, sugar-fueled suicide pact thanks to your gift

Fundraisers for cancer research that promote carbohydrate eating and especially that fetishize sugar-laden treats drive me bananas. Do you really want to cure cancer if you are right there in the front lines feeding people cookies and Fruitopia? Please tell me you see the irony if not the criminal negligence in this action.

See:

every fundraiser at your kid’s school that sells lollipops, cookies, juice or cake in exchange for a donation to cancer research

cancer research advertisements asking you to give money so that Mary can spend one last year with her grandchildren baking cookies

kids selling chocolate bars with the pink ribbon on them, or any candy with a pink ribbon on it

foundations specifically called names like “Cookies for Kids’ Cancer” (even though it is an honest name – cookies ARE for kids’ cancer since cookies literally feed the cancer)

I am not trying to offend you if you are dedicated to raising money for cancer research (or ANY medical research for that matter) through selling the poison that feeds cancer. But maybe you should examine what you are doing? Maybe sell crafts instead? Maybe don’t support those fundraisers in your kid’s school anymore. After all, your kid is at school to learn something – make this lesson your top priority.

ANOTHER NOTE ON CANCER FUNDRAISING

This is a sore point so I’m not going to get too deeply into this. But cancer fundraising is a huge, multi-billion dollar business that doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with curing or preventing cancer, in my opinion. I might be overstating it. But again, in my opinion, cancer fundraising has a lot to do with funding itself and finding medical interventions for people who don’t want to change their diet or lifestyle, and for economies that don’t want to change their reliance on easy carbohydrates to make a profit.

You should be advised that despite over 1,000 clinical studies showing that cancer is a metabolic disease, and that it can be reversed into remission by eliminating carbohydrates from the diet – the famously esteemed Mayo Clinic is still calling this concept “a myth”. I can absolutely guarantee that if you get a diagnosis of cancer and go to your oncologist and ask what role nutrition or carbohydrates have in cancer, you will be told patronizingly not to worry about it.

However avoiding sugar and reducing carbohydrate consumption is possibly the best medicine and it is FREE. And it causes no harm. I really don’t know what else to say.

Sometimes a weekend gets away from you when there are birthdays and holiday parties to host and attend. I’m talking excessive wine and champagne, buttercream cakes, croissants, scalloped potatoes, chips and crackers, candy and chocolate. Well that was my weekend anyway. No big thing, let’s do a reset.

Today I’m going to eat a moderate amount of nutrient-dense food (let’s say 1400 calories for my body size and activity level), and I’m going to consume my proteins and carbohydrates exclusively during an 8-hour window, between noon and 8pm. But I can eat fats in the morning to give me energy and bowel motility for the day ahead. This plan is specifically tailored as an LCHF (Low Carbohydrate High Fat) day to reset my fat burning potential and redirect my body into an appropriate state of ketosis.

START OF THE DAY

I’m going to start with a “Butter Coffee”. I brew a long espresso over a Tbsp of organic, pasture butter and a Tbsp of coconut oil. You could also add some boiling water if your espresso isn’t “long” enough. Then I shake in some organic cinnamon and a few drops of vanilla or a few shakes of vanilla bean powder. Then I dump this oily mess into my Vitamix or blender, and blend on high for about 10 seconds to really emulsify the fats. My long espresso turns from black to creamy caramel. I pour it into my favourite mug and enjoy.

This gives me a lot of energy for my morning, and also gets my bowel motility going pretty rapidly. I’m sharing that because I know you want to know. But I am adjusted to this amount of fat, which is an important detail. Sometimes I do 2 Tbsp of butter and 2 Tbsp of coconut oil. Sometimes I’m just that kooky. If you are not used to eating this much fat, try starting with just 1/2 Tbsp of coconut oil. Maybe the next day add 1/2 Tbsp of butter, and then work up from there. Too much fat too soon can literally make you feel nauseous, especially coconut oil. But if you are adjusted to it, it makes you feel great: alert, energized and moisturized!

BREAKING THE FAST: LUNCHTIME

At noon, or closer to 1pm if convenient, I’m going to eat a pretty easy lunch of a can of sardines packed in olive oil or water (not soybean or canola oil), and a parsley salad.

The can of sardines I have handy (Open Seas Portugese sardines) has 11g of fat and 15g of protein.

The parsley salad is a revelation that I discovered in Istanbul. It’s basically tabouli without the couscous. I take 2 bunches of washed flat-leaf parsley and 1 bunch of washed mint and chop them in a food processor with some cucumber. You can also add some lemon peel, lemon juice, garlic and scallions. Then I add some grape tomatoes and a dressing of olive oil and white balsamic vinegar, a touch of dijon mustard and fresh garlic.

Why this salad is a revelation is that parsley is off the charts with nutrient density. 1 serving of this salad is worth about 2 cups of parsley, which gives you 303% of your Vitamin A for the day, 213% of your Vitamin C, 41% of your iron and 17% of your Calcium – not to mention over 2000% of your Vitamin K1, 46% of your Folate, 19% of your Manganese and 10%o four Phosporous. There’s more to parsley, but the numbers are starting to get boring and smaller.

And as far as macronutrients go, 2 cups of parsley has 1g of fat, 8g of carbohydrates and 4g of protein. This is a salad winner. Add some olive oil and vinegar dressing as the fats and acids will help your body metabolize the nutrients in the salad.

SNACKING

First of all I’m going to drink a lot of tea today, specifically nettle tea. Nettles do a million great things, including stimulating the lymph system and boosting the immune system – great at this time of year.

If I feel like a snack today, I’m going to have some high quality olives. 10 large olives have about 5g of fat and 3g of carbohydrates. In addition to their blood pressure lowering properties (due to high monounsaturated oil content), olives are packed with phytonutrients like phenols and terpenes that specifically interrupt the life cycle of breast cancer and gastric cancer cells, and also protect DNA from oxidative damage.

GET READY FOR DINNER

As I’m calling this a “reset day”, these meals are going to be quick and easy. I’m going to have a 3-egg omelette for dinner with 1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese inside. The whole thing will be cooked in butter. I might add some scallions and hot sauce if I feel like it.

I might have a few radishes on the side as a garnish, or a little scoop of fermented carrots and beets as an additional condiment.

DESSERT

Okay it’s not fair to call this dessert. But it’s the most “carby” item of the day, so it sort of fits into this category. After I’ve digested dinner but before my “8 hour window” is done, I’m going to have 1 cup of home-made whole milk kefir. You could have a little bowl of yoghurt or some whole milk kefir (unflavored) from the store. I really like to finish my day with some heavy duty probiotics like this, so that they can get to work on my digestive system overnight. Also, the sugar and the fat in the milk will keep me from getting at all hungry over the night, and will help guide me to sleep.

LET’S LOOK AT THIS 1400 CALORIE DAY

I think I should just re-state that I don’t “count calories”, but that they are still a handy marker for how much food I have eaten. When I am adjusted to eating more fat, I tend to consume less calories overall and yet feel more satiated.

Today’s meals and condiments break down to a ratio of calories from 70% fat, 11% carbohydrates and 19% protein.

I will also have eaten over 1000% of my daily Vitamin A, over 400% of my Vitamin C, 122% of my Calcium, 84% of my iron, 40% of my Vitamin D, over 3000% of my Vitamin K1, etc.

My Vitamin D from today’s foods is a little low, so I will take my cod liver oil supplements like I always do to compensate. My B vitamins are also a little low (only meeting about 60% of required B6, B12 and Folate), so I will supplement with a topical Vitamin B cream, which is designed to bypass digestion and get right into my cells. I’m also only hitting about 50% of my Magnesium requirements, so I’m going to use a topical Magnesium gel and an Epsom salts bath. And as Vitamin K2 is either not measured in our foods or not present, I am always going to take a K2 supplement (mine comes with Vitamin D as well).

This is a pretty good reset day. Probably a little higher in protein for me than necessary, but basically a good day.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

This week I’m going to do the Butter Coffee regime every morning. For lunch I’ll switch it up with a kale salad and some boiled eggs. For dinner I’ll have lamb chops or wild salmon with some broccoli or leeks. I’ll try to finish off every day with some kefir.

I’ll let you know how long this lasts before I accidentally eat a bag of chips.